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Justinian was now free from trouble at home and abroad, and turned to those ambitious schemes of foreign policy which were to occupy the rest of his reign. The dream of his heart was to reunite the Roman Empire, by bringing once more under his sceptre all those western provinces which were occupied by Teutonic kings, and paid only the shadow of homage to the imperial name. A few years before, the dream would have seemed fantastically overweening, but of late matters had been growing more and more promising. Justinian was, compared with his four predecessors, young and vigorous; he had an immense store of treasure, all the hoard of Anastasius, a large and efficient army, and at least one general of first-rate ability. His throne was firmly rooted; his eastern frontier secure; nothing now prevented him from undertaking wars of aggression.

Meanwhile, everything in the West favoured his projects. In Italy the great Theodoric was dead, and, since his death, the Ostrogothic kingdom had been faring ill. The old hero had left his realm to his grandson Athalaric, a boy of eight years old, under the guardianship of his mother Amalaswintha, the widow of Eutharic. The daughter of Theodoric was a clever and masterful woman, but she had a difficult task in teaching the turbulent Ostrogoths to obey a female regent. |Minority of Athalaric, 526-34.| They murmured at all her doings, and most especially at her taste for Roman and Greek letters, and her frequent promotions of Roman officials. She strove to bring up her son, it was said, more as an Italian than a Goth, placing him under Roman tutors and keeping him tight to the desk, in spite of the saying of Theodoric that ‘he who has trembled before the pedagogue’s rod will not face the spear willingly.’ It was as much as Amalaswintha could do to keep the Goths in their obedience while her son was young, but when he had attained the age of twelve or thirteen, and began to show some will of his own, the murmurs of the people grew louder. At last, when he had one day been chastised by his mother, he burst into the guard-room, and bade his subjects take note how a king of the Goths was treated worse than a slave. This scene produced a tumult, and the chiefs of the Goths took the education of the boy out of his mother’s hands, though they left her the regency. Handed over to unsuitable companions Athalaric grew idle, drunken, and reckless; he was of a weakly habit of body, and, before he reached manhood, had developed the symptoms of consumption. Meanwhile, Amalaswintha was contending for power with the chiefs of the Goths, and had earned much unpopularity by putting to death, without form of trial, the three heads of the party which opposed her. So uncertain was her position that she sent secretly to Justinian in 533 to beg him to give her refuge at Dyrrhachium if she should be forced to fly. The emperor soon grasped the position—a divided people, an unpopular regent, a boy-king sinking into his grave invited him to active interference in Italy.